Debunking Bush’s Whoppers On Porkmore..
President Bush has tried to justify his planned veto of Congress’ Iraq withdrawal legislation by complaining about the non-Iraq related funds included in the bill.
American Progress senior fellow Scott Lilly, who served for years as Clerk and Staff Director of the House Appropriations Committee, debunks Bush’s rhetoric:
CLAIM: Bush opposes spending in the emergency supplemental that is “unrelated to the war.”
FACT: Bush’s own supplemental request to Congress contained millions in non-war related funds.
Contained in Bush’s request were funds for federal prisons, Kosovo debt relief, flood control on the Mississippi, nutrition programs in Africa, educational and cultural exchange activities around the world, disease control in South Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe, and salaries for U.S. marshals.
The request spread additional funding across seven major departments of the federal government. Such items were not only contained in the White House request for this year’s supplemental but have been part of nearly every supplemental the president has signed since the beginning of the Iraq war. One quarter of the money in last year’s $94 billion “Iraq” supplemental was directed at a variety of domestic programs.
Poor George, his rubber stamp Congress has gone. But he lied then and he still lies now about everything. We should examine all pork funding for the last 6 years, but better yet..let's look into the last 30 years or so. The American public would like to know.
NASA: Mars Probe Doomed By Human Error, Report Finds Error Triggered Battery To Fail On Mars Global Surveyor Last Year - CBS News
(AP) Human error triggered a cascade of events that caused the battery to fail on the Mars Global Surveyor last year, according to a preliminary report released Friday.
An internal NASA board determined that power loss likely doomed the spacecraft after a decade of meticulously mapping the Red Planet.
But the problems actually began in 2005, when a routine technical update to onboard computers caused inconsistencies in the spacecraft's memory. The board concluded that engineers didn't catch the mistakes because the existing procedures to do so were inadequate.
Scientists lost contact last November with the $154 million Global Surveyor. Launched in 1996, it was the oldest of six different active probes on the Martian surface or circling the planet.
Several attempts to locate the spacecraft were unsuccessful, and the mission was declared ended in January.
Global Surveyor was built with redundant control systems to guard against failure. However, the board found inconsistencies in the memories of the spacecraft's two onboard computers because the updates were done at different times.
Six months before Global Surveyor fell silent, engineers sent up incorrect software commands that disabled its solar panels. A final command in November telling the spacecraft to adjust its solar panels caused the battery to overheat and lose power.
The Global Surveyor beamed back some 240,000 pictures, including the first detailed views of swirling dust devils and gullies.
NASA keeping secrets? oxymoron?
Stung by Indictment, a Power Broker Punches Back - New York Times
ASPEN, Colo. — David A. Stockman is trying to unwind at his second home here after another long day spent scouring legal documents. Dinner at a restaurant with his wife, Jennifer, has been a balm, to say nothing of the big glass of scotch he has nursed throughout the evening.
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Keith Bedford/Reuters
David A. Stockman, the former chief executive of the auto parts maker Collins & Aikman, after his arraignment in Manhattan in March.
He has much to brood over. Mr. Stockman, President Ronald Reagan’s budget director, is facing a trial next year on fraud charges after his attempt to save an auto parts maker from bankruptcy had failed.
“How can you end up losing $13 million of your own money and $350 million of your fund’s and still end up with 30 years in jail?” he asks.
His anger builds. “It’s wrong. It’s sick. I had an honorable career in public and private life and now this prosecutor goes after me as if I were a — ”
“Criminal,” his wife breaks in, saying what Mr. Stockman could not.
David Stockman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Public servants should be viewed openly by the public, there should be no secrets. They tend to forget who their employers are...the People. The People need to demand of the public servants elected to Congress that they and the President and his staff are not there to wheel and deal for corporate selves, friends, graft, perks, kids, whatever. Our country has gone down the tubes from these "public servants" just about killing each other to get "in office". Stop the corruption, entitlement, and the cover-ups.
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